As the astute reader knows, if you drive eastbound up Main Street out of Happy Valley and then follow Highway Route 76 north through Bonnyview Shores, you will cross the Boveena Bridge and come to the Land of the Contentious Cows.

We won't stop to shop for shoes in Boveena, today, for our journey takes us onward toward a land that is not often discussed in the polite society of Happy Valley.

At least, that is, until now.

Route 76 wanders northward out of Boveena through treacherous moutain passes that more often than not are closed by snow in the winter. It would be very easy to overlook a side road that leads down out of the mountains toward a town that spreads along the shore of a very large natural harbor.

It is a town with no real name. A town that the more civilized denizens of the larger cities regard as best forgotten. A town known to its residents as...

The Meat Market

... the Meat Market. And it is here, dear reader, that our sordid story unfolds.

Some have wondered why there are so few people in Happy Valley who follow the code of the so-called "Romance" aspiration. Now we can see why this is. Unable find sufficient willing partners with whom they can pursue their form of happiness anywhere near the big city, such-minded folk inevitably migrate northward and settle in the Meat Market.

Other than that cultural note, the story of the Meat Market as a town is hardly worth telling. Imagine, if you will, endless, repetitive streams of episodes about Tab A in Slut B, of the writhing naked bodies of hedonistic sexual predators stacked like cordwood at the one community lot, and you will have covered the whole of it.

Our story here is about the one resident of the Meat Market who does not follow the "Romance" credo.

We will skip over all the begats and get straight to the point. A few generations back, in the old country, the family line that produced Sheba's mother, Lois, merged with the line of the Chatterleys of Chatterley. Through the inexorable processes of procreation and migration, that family yielded up a child who not only lived very close to Happy Valley, but in fact was almost identical to her famous distant cousin.

Almost identical, but not quite.

Lady Constance ChatterleyMistletoe is a major thematic element in her interior decorating scheme.

Her mother named her after her infamous anscestor, about whom D. H. Lawrence wrote his scandalous novel.

Constance had heard of her famous distant cousin, but had never met Her. Though she derived some amusement from having a wealthy celebrity for a relative, it wasn't really important to her. She wasn't the sort to impose herself on blood relations, giving preference to defining her own life.

Fortune had smiled upon Constance and left her with a significant inheritance. When she was very young, her adventurous parents had perished in a helicopter crash. Rumor had it that the state of dress and the position of the bodies found in the wreck indicated that the helicopter's two occupants were both quite distracted when the chopper collided a hilltop in Scotland, far off its official flight plan. Lady Constance had come to the New World as a child to be raised by relatives whom she had never met.

When she grew up and wanted to move out on her own, Constance didn't even consider trying to settle in Happy Valley. That city's reputation was well-known, and she knew that she would be a misfit in Happy Valley society. Bonnyview Shores was just too weird. So was Strangetown and too dry to boot. As for Boveena, well, just forget that one; too bovine and too banal.

Constance Chatterley, Passionate Bibliophile

Then she heard about the Meat Market. Most of the stories she heard about that community's social activities were about things that Constance would have no interest in participating in, except perhaps as a spectator. Nevertheless, the mind set of the people there appealed to her. It seemed to be the place where she would find what she most wanted in life, a place where she would be accepted for herself.

She took a big chance and invested a goodly portion of her inheritance--or at least of the part remaining after her guardians had squandered the majority of it--in a nice house just two blocks up from the harbor. She thought she might join the yacht club, even though she really couldn't afford a yacht. They seemed to be a fun group.

Once the house was built at furnished enough to be livable, she settled down to pursue her goals. One of her goals was to read every volume in the collection of Victorian erotica that had been passed down through the generations from her notorious namesake, but that was not the primary pursuit that she pondered.

Like her distant relative to the south, Constance wanted to find a husband with whom she could raise a large family, but pursuing that goal would be much more difficult for Constance. While Sheba had found a ready-made target for Her affection as a part of Her life since infancy, Constance didn't know any guys whom she was interested in.

And for Constance, it would have to be a very unique guy. She was unaware that she also resembled her distant relative in another way. Though quite devoted to Her husband and family, Sheba had always been particularly affectionate toward women. That worked for Her--She had lots of female friends all over the valley--but for Constance, that affection toward women tended toward extreme passion, to the point of obsession.

Had she thought about it, Constance might have traced this trait to her childhood experiences, but she never really thought about; she just knew that she had it, and that in this she was different from most of the girls she grew up with.

That left Constance with a conundrum. While she was indeed hoping to find a father for her children, it would have to be a very unique man. She wanted someone who would be able to understand and tolerate her desire to pursue women as an extracurricular activity. It would be even better if he went beyond tolerating it, to the point of encouraging and supporting it.

Constance was looking for more than a husband. She was looking for a hunting partner.

It's Photoshop. I shot straight-down aerial views of all cities in The Sims 2 Neighborhood screens, with the goal of building a big map that would help me keep consistent references to the cities where the neighborhood stories cross over.

I arranged the city images into one picture in Photoshop, putting the cities in the same relationship to each other that I had already described in the stories. Then I filled in the coastlines to match the city terrain and added mountains and roads to match what I had alread written about.

The relatively flat green areas are terrae incognitae. I haven't written stories about those areas or mapped cities into them.

I hadn't thought of using Sim City 4 for this until Rose mentioned it, but it sounds like a neat idea. I'm not familiar enough with SC4 to know if it's possible to define a block of adjacent terrains of the right size to import into The Sims 2, but if you can that would be a really nifty way to make a consistent set of neighboring neighborhoods!

Have you figured out a way to tell Sim City 4 how to partition the sundry terrains? As far as I know, only the smallest partition can be used as a neighborhood terrain in The Sims 2, which kind of limits how much mischief I can get into with it.

Yes, Greg, you can only use the smaller SC4 lots, the larger lots introduced by Rush hour are just not seen by Sims 2. I've tried, it just doesn't accept em. There might be someone on the Rush Hour boards who could tell you how to divide them I spose. There are clever hackers there too.

I wish I could use all of them, I'ld like to be able to use the whole continent there not just chunks of it.

Rose, Rush Hour actually adds hugely to the gameplay of SC4, and I think there is a deluxe-type pack now with both in, shouldn't be too expensive now as it's been out for ages.